How Alvin Cailan, Chef and Restaurateur, Spends His Sundays

“Los Angeles, it’s a little bit different,” the chef Alvin Cailan recently said about his former home. “When the sun’s out, you kind of just want to lounge around and like, drink.” However, Mr. Cailan, 35, has always preferred more of an adrenaline rush. In 2017, after years of running his West Coast microchain, Eggslut, Mr. Cailan went bicoastal, dividing his time between various restaurant projects and serving as the host of “The Burger Show,” a web series. This past April, he and his girlfriend, Angela Gomez, 27, moved to Manhattan permanently with Dashi, their American Bully. They are now living together in an apartment in NoLIta, with Mr. Cailan’s general manager, Kim Trac, 31, a block away. And in early July, Mr. Cailan will open his first New York restaurant, The Usual, in the Nolitan Hotel, at 30 Kenmare Street. He plans to serve, as he told The Times recently, “the food we all crave,” prepared by “the children of immigrants.”

SLOW START I like to roll out of bed around 8:30, 8. I usually just like to have a real slow start, like sit, lounge on the couch. I love hip-hop, but I can’t listen to hip-hop in the morning. I hate the news; I don’t like aggressive things as I wake up. Even like my girlfriend, if she tries to wake me up, she has to like, slowly do it because it’s like if someone wakes me up by yelling, I jump out of bed and I’m already like, “What is going on?”

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“I try to do fun things with my chefs and cooks,” Mr. Cailan said. “Like, ‘Let’s create something that not necessarily will 100 percent make it onto the menu, but let’s try some new dishes out like cook it at your house and bring it over, a type of potluck or whatever.’”CreditCaitlin Ochs for The New York Times

GAME PLAN We sit in our kitchen or in our dining room and we argue about what we’re going to go eat. So like that whole process takes like 30 minutes to 45 minutes. We’ll drive by Clinton Street Baking Company and we’ll see if it’s packed. On this side of town, that’s like my go-to pancakes spot.

INTEL We’re always like, scoping things out. We’re always picking out like, training habits, we listen to other people’s tables, we look at all the food that servers are carrying. It’s something that we can turn off when we’re at like, Pho Bang or Joe’s Shanghai. Those are the forgivables. When we go to a place like Hillstone, we’re going to be so on top of it purely because that company is so proud of their training regimen. We’re like, “O.K., well we’re still minor leaguers, right? Those guys are major. How can we better our staff as a small company to rival the consistency and the reliability of those other kinds of restaurants?”

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Mr. Cailan at Holiday Flowers and Plants on West 28th Street in Manhattan.CreditCaitlin Ochs for The New York Times

GOING GREEN We just moved into our apartment, and we’re 95 percent done with the construction at the restaurant. The thing about modern design is that it can come off sterile, or like very cold. So we kind of need some green to make it feel more alive. We bought plants on the Lower East Side, and I was outraged how much the prices were.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE We’ll go to Brooklyn and there’s this place that has plates and enamelware. We’ll go to places like that and scope things out. I like to find deals. I like Sur La Table. When we’re not at work or when we have time off, it’s still kind of work, but still kind of shopping. We do that or I’ll sharpen my knives. If they don’t need to get sharpened, I’ll at least oil them up.

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Mr. Cailan and his friends testing out burger meats at his apartment in NoLIta.CreditCaitlin Ochs for The New York Times

WHAT’S NEXT TO EAT? We’re doing errands until like 4. Then we rest. We have another coffee. Definitely another coffee, and this time we’re just drinking it out of the refrigerator. We’re hanging out. We’re just really just refreshing, we’re using the restroom, sitting down and then goes the, “What’s next to eat?”

PLAYING WITH FOOD I try to do fun things with my chefs and cooks. Like, “Let’s create something that not necessarily will 100 percent make it onto the menu, but let’s try some new dishes out like cook it at your house and bring it over, a type of potluck or whatever.” But really it’s just so I bond with my team.

LATE NIGHT Angela will call it quits and go to bed around 11, but me and Kim will stay up until 2, and my brother will just stay and hang out and either watch TV, or watch TV and talk about work, or look at ridiculous food online on Instagram. We’ll tag each other on like a nine-patty burger, “Yo, what is this?” Kim’ll send me photos of seafood towers and we’ll be like, “Oh man, like let’s go to The Dutch.” It’s just the most unhealthy relationship.